Dominium

Cyrus

Human Male Paladin of the Raven Queen

Description:

A human in his late-20’s with a face weathered beyond its years and eyes the color and warmth of an ice floe. Customarily dressed in a black hooded coat over mail and bristling with weaponry that appears to have seen its fair share of use. Looking closely, you can see that his hood doesn’t completely hide an unruly mop of white hair, though how a young man came to have such an odd feature is anyone’s guess…

And when Fate finally comes for me,
Grant that my death be not in vain."
—Battle Invocation of the Winter Knights

Cyrus always had a strong affinity for the dead. As a child, he would often see the spirits of the dead walking among the living, appearing to him as perfectly normal, healthy people in the prime of life. The boy would occasionally point out or speak to a person who was not there, but his parents assumed he simply had an overactive imagination, and Cyrus never suspected these people were anything other than what they appeared to be. That is, until one of them attacked him and tried to possess his body. His family found him lying in the village cemetery, bloody and speaking gibberish.

As he slowly recovered, he began to see the ghosts everywhere, and where most of them had previously largely ignored him, now they spoke to him almost constantly, as though the attack had somehow marked him in their eyes. Unable to explain what had happened to him and desperately trying to shut out voices no one else could hear, many of his friends and family began to think him hopelessly insane. The local priests of Erathis came to a more dangerous conclusion: Cyrus was cursed, and this taint must be removed from the village. To avoid being stoned, burned, or worse, Cyrus fled his village and ultimately sought refuge at a monastery of the Raven Queen, hoping that, if anyone had the knowledge to cure his affliction, it would be the priests of the Mistress of Death. The monks took him in and eventually taught him to keep most of the spirits at bay. In return, Cyrus dedicated himself to the service of Raven Queen.

Cyrus has spent the intervening years adventuring throughout the Archipelago on assignments from his superiors, either alone or with other paladins of his order. Most recently, one such assignment took him to Dominium City, where he witnessed an outbreak of evil necromancy beyond anything in his experience. As the dead rose from their graves en masse and wreaked havoc across the city, the Erathian Cathedral publicly denounced the cult of the Raven Queen and ordered all acolytes of her shrines to be imprisoned. Though he and his companions were forced to flee, Cyrus believes he knows who is truly responsible for this abomination, and one day he will deliver the Raven Queen’s vengeance…